Australia So Far (March)

Well, firstly, we must apologise that it has taken so long for us to send round an email with lots of info about what we’ve been up to. There isn’t a particularly good excuse for this other than our usual lack of organisation.

Most of you probably know that we have moved into our new home. It doesn’t feel very homely at the moment, as we still haven’t got our furniture. Our removalists say it is on a boat and that it should arrive on 25th March. From what other people tell us, there is usually another week after that before it can be delivered...The Australian authorities are very strict about what can and can’t come into the country. There shouldn’t be any trouble, though, as we made sure that all the wicker items were left in our attic or with Sarah T.

Before we moved in here we were staying in an apartment right in the city. This was quite fun, but the place had no soul to it at all. It was great in terms of getting to work as it was either a 5 minute train ride or a 30 minute walk (which I did most days when it was cool enough). As a result it was quite nice to get somewhere sorted so quickly. One of the other guys who came over from the US took over 6 weeks to find a suitable place.

So what is our house like? Hopefully we will work out how to send some pictures along with this email. Anyway, it is a town house that has only just been built. We are the first to live in it so it is quite different to our home in Southampton - which is older than most houses here. It is in a terrace of eight units. The security is a bit over the top - You have to be buzzed in at the front gate and for the visitors parking. The parking is actually underneath the house and there are stairs leading up from it into the kitchen/dining room, which is a novelty. There is a caged parking space for our car, and last week I managed to scrape the front of the car when reversing out. Libby said that she was glad that she hadn’t done it - the reaction would have been very different.

The kitchen is quite well fitted out and there should be enough space to store all of our stuff when it arrives. Most of it is against one wall, but there is a little island where the sink and dishwasher is which overlooks the dining area and back courtyard. We think that the pew will fit in and we are going to ask the people we are borrowing a dining table from (Jane and Andrew) if we can buy it off them or have it on long term loan. It’s a good job we left our old one with Rob and Kay as there would definitely not be enough room for it! They have also lent us a mattress and some crockery. Oh, and some garden chairs which prove the rule that the more disgusting they look the more comfortable they are - These are extremely comfortable!!! There is a little utility room, which has a sink and the washing machine in it. Most of the time there are flowers in the sink, which I’ll let Libby tell you about later! The courtyard outside is only about 5x5m but big enough for my early birthday present from Libby - the world’s best BBQ - Well, you can’t live out here and not get a decent BBQ. Chris (Libby’s brother) would still argue that a decent charcoal BBQ would be better, but I cooked eggs on this one the first night we had it!! It is just as easy to cook on the BBQ as it is inside...

The lounge is a bit of a depressing place as it just has some curtain poles and my thongs in there. Now I had better emphasise the point that thongs here are what we English would call flip-flops. We still wonder what Aussies made of the thong song!! We are confident that once completely filled with all our junk that it will soon become a nice room to be in. We are hoping to have our books in here too, but we will need to buy yet more things for the room. We have had a couple of trips to IKEA already - just like being at the Purley Way in Croydon - to get some curtains and other small bits and bobs we know we’ll need. Out the front of the lounge is an even smaller courtyard, which we have looking pretty good. We have been to some nurseries and plant pot places to get some big plants. With some outside chairs from IKEA it is quite a nice place to sit. We also bought some plants from Bunning’s Warehouse. You will be pleased to hear that Josh has found his B&Q replacement in Bunning’s. It is vast, so vast that it makes Hedge End look a bit lacking in choice and variety! The other thing that is so ridiculous is the price! There are cordless drills for $18, which is about £7.50. In fact a whole range of power tools for $18. I have been helping Chris and Niccy with some DIY which he enjoyed too much! Got some more electrical things to do over the next few weeks. This has been good as it meant another excuse to head out to Bunning’s (Guess who wrote about Bunning’s - Sorry, bit carried away - but, I do look forward to wandering around it with my dad when he’s over!! It’s a Crandon thing that I don’t expect any of you to understand!)

So apart from telling you about the toilet, that’s the downstairs. Upstairs there are two double bedrooms and a bathroom. Both the bedrooms have a balcony and we’ve bought some Jasmine to go out on ours, which smells wonderful. On Saturday nights we leave our windows open until just before we go to sleep because there is a chapel just out the front where there are some Christian men who spend a few hours singing. We are not sure what nationality they are, but it is extremely enchanting and a delightful sound. In the chapel grounds there are lots of banana trees and some of them are over hanging the fence - Libby has her eye on them for when they ripen.

We’ve had many discussions about where things are going to live once our stuff arrives, but really have few conclusions!

The bathroom is quite nice and there is a shower over the bath. The piece of glass that is meant to stop the water going over the floor might as well not be there at all as it is not wide enough by about a foot!! This doesn’t matter too much as the floor is tiled and there is a drain in the middle of the room - think it’s just how they do things out here.

The only other thing of note about the house is the area at the top of the stairs, which we’ll probably use as a computer area/study.

So that’s the house. It is about 5 mins walk from the station and a 15 minute train ride to the city. We are also only 5 minutes from Chris and Niccy, which has been really nice. Without them I’m really not sure that we’d still be here! They have let us use their house as their own and we’ve been out with them most weekends and are round for dinner at least once during the week. Niccy has liked having company while Chris is away on business. Chris clearly loves having Libby around and vice versa, although neither of them would ever say so!! I have felt part of the family, which has helped a sense of belonging here in some ways at least. The kids, Bertie, Eliza and Matilda are great fun to play with although exhausting. Josh has a certain scare-factor with the twins still at the moment, which really comes in handy at bedtime! Bertie is obsessed with thunderbirds currently, which is very amusing! We watched a whole episode together, which might have been a first for Libby. Bertie was a little unsure at times - “This isn’t scary music is it? I’m not scared of this music, are you Josh?”. It was his birthday a couple of weeks back and Libby made him a spaceship out of the box that our TV came in. We sprayed it silver (with spray paint from where else, but Bunning’s - sorry) and it has a flap so that he can get in and out. Getting it out of the house after the wings were taped to it was very funny as we couldn’t get it out of the front door and so had to go out the back and then over the fence. Only then did we find that it wouldn’t fit in the car!! Walking round with it was a bit embarrassing, but started a couple of conversations with passers-by! Anyway it was worth it as Bertie did like it - in fact no one was even allowed to look inside!! Libby is now heading up the project management of the next project - Blue Peter version of Tracey Island.

At the moment there are 2 whole generations of Swanns here with Jo out on holiday. She is heading off to New Zealand for a week today, but yesterday we spent the day at a place called Bobbin Head Point. It was a lovely mix of bushland and estuary on a day that was about 28 Celsius - Not bad for the equivalent of end of September in the UK!! We saw a lizard of some description [It was a goanna - Libby - Hello everyone!] - it was just hanging around looking for food and about a metre long. No-one paid much attention to it, just the sort of thing they see everyday I guess. It was so nice to get out of the city for a few hours. We are really looking forward to a couple of weekends away. We are planning to give Penny and Stuart a call to see if they are free one of the next weekends for a visit.

My work has been different and expectations for it being easier than in the UK were mistaken. There are some issues with the management team which means that I have to work long days and the stress is higher. All this for less holiday and pay! I’m is going to have a chat with my direct line manager on Monday to try and resolve some of the issues. It has been hard for me since I left a job that I was really enjoying on the whole. Stressful enough leaving behind friends and family without having to deal with work not being much fun either.

We have been to a few churches in the area, but have not set our roots down in any of them yet. This has been much harder than we expected as you’d expect Sydney to be overflowing with places to go. Unfortunately not so, and trying to find somewhere we’ll feel comfortable (but not too comfortable) is quite difficult. Last Sunday we went to Petersham Anglican church and that seems to be the best fit so far. There were a number of people around our age and they were very friendly. We will try to get along to a house group this week, but unfortunately today (Sunday) we overslept a bit and missed the morning service. Hopefully we’ll be able to get there this evening.

Well - I think that Josh has covered most things. What else can I think of to tell you about, other than that we need to get some more yoghurt, milk and bread? We miss everyone at home and we’re missing being somewhere familiar - although there are new things here that are just starting to feel familiar now. This week I was walking around the Botanical Gardens (just by the Opera House and alongside the harbour) and I came across a bird that talked to me a bit, and I recognised its voice as being a bird that they use as background noise in Neighbours... I couldn’t actually establish with him whether he was the exact bird who features on Neighbours, so quite possibly it is in fact one of his cousins or friends. Anyway, he was very chatty with me and looked me in the eye while he was talking. I think we formed quite a bond. A man sitting having a coffee looked at me a little strangely when I carried on walking after our conversation (I whispered very quietly so as not to draw attention to myself, but perhaps he saw my lips moving) - Maybe he was wishing that he’d thought of talking to the bird first, who was, after all, standing just by him. Josh couldn’t write about this episode because he was at work at the time, but had he been there it would have been his number one thing to tell you about (after our shopping list) just like it has been for me.

Josh mentioned flowers to you... Most of you probably already know that I’m doing a course each Thursday learning to be a florist, and I’m enjoying it very much. So far I haven’t had much success with making corsages (they’re very fiddly) so I need to practice! Some of the other things I find easier, though. I’ve been to the flower market a few times, and love that too - Josh is very pleased that he has found a strong enough motivation to get me out of bed early on a Saturday morning, because you really have to be there by 7am and preferably earlier. Getting to the market here is fairly easy because it’s close and it’s always quite light in the mornings, but I’m thinking that if this is something that I decide to do as my job I’ll have to go to the London markets when we get home, and that could be hard on a cold February morning.

Anyway, better get on with things now. Needless to say that we miss home and people a great deal. One last thing - My back has been much worse over the last week and it means that I’m not sleeping very well.

Lots of love from

Josh and Libby xxxx